Coming off the worst season of his career, Derek Jeter will report to the Yankees’ spring training complex in two weeks to get a head start working with hitting coach Kevin Long.

Full squad workouts aren’t until February 20, but Long told Brian Costello of the New York Post that Jeter “wants to get going” and has already started to make some mechanical adjustments:

We’re well on our way to getting that taken care of and seeing if we can’t speed up the process with him a little bit. I just want to pick up basically where we left off last year and go from there. I think we found something with his stride and the direction of his stride and going up and down with his stride instead of gaining distance and going in. We’re going to try to keep it as simple as we can, try to control his movement and try to get him to be more consistent through the contact point.

Jeter batted .330 in April last year, but then hit just .260 with a lowly .344 slugging percentage in 136 games from May 1 to the end of the season while never cracking even a .725 OPS in a month. After some ugliness in negotiations played out through the media, Jeter and the Yankees agreed to a three-year, $51 million deal that will keep him in New York through at least age 39.

Hip, hip Jorge. Just kidding. I know we are talking about Jeter. I just like the way that sounds. Hopefully Jeter can drink a little magic elixir and prove the Yankees management and most Yankee fans (myself included) wrong about last season.

I read through this and at the end I thought, What? No backhanded compliments or anything, This must not be Craig Calcaterra. [scrolls up] I was right. Not that backhanded compliments are bad, usually they’re pretty funny, just that after reading this I knew that it wasn’t Craig. Maybe it’s time for me to find a new hobby.